My Natural Born Chill

How I Allow Life To Be Wild and Free

It started with a woman at a coffeehouse I frequent screaming into her Bluetooth headset, waving a half-empty oat milk latte like it was the scepter of doom. I wanted to intervene. But instead, I sipped my own coffee and leaned back into my seat. This wasn’t my circus, and those weren’t my issues.

This moment—and others like it—have been reminding me of something vital lately, namely, the Taoist concept of Ziran, or naturalness. It’s a philosophy of letting life unfold as it is meant to, without force or interference. And let me tell you, Ziran has become my guiding star amid humanity’s wildfire of absurdity.

A Definition of Ziran: My Best Shot

The word Ziran translates roughly to “self-so,” or “of itself so.” It’s the idea that things—people, events, even oat milk lattes—naturally follow their own course if left alone.

The Taoist Sage Lao Tzu captured it beautifully in the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone.”

Ziran is about flowing with the rhythm of life, trusting the universe to work its magic, and, most importantly, not trying to play conductor when you’re supposed to just be part of the orchestra.

It’s easy to misunderstand Ziran as laziness or indifference, but it’s quite the opposite. Ziran requires you to stay deeply attuned to the currents of life while resisting the urge to fight them. It’s about trusting your natural path while allowing others to walk theirs—however chaotic or bewildering those paths may seem.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been fielding a medley of bizarre human encounters, each one an unintentional test of my commitment to Ziran.

Each encounter reminded me of this: when we cling to the illusion that we can (or should) control others, we lose our own natural rhythm. Ziran is about trusting that life has its own flow—and learning to ride its waves instead of building dams.

The Poetry of Staying in Your Own Lane

Ziran is like a river, flowing effortlessly toward the sea. It doesn’t berate rocks for being in the way; it simply flows around them. It doesn’t question the winding twists of its path; it follows them gracefully. And it certainly doesn’t waste time comparing itself to the creek next door.

In life, I’ve found that staying on my natural path—my metaphorical river—is essential. When I try to “correct” others’ flow or allow them to steer mine, I end up swimming against the current. It’s exhausting and pointless, like trying to row upstream in a leaky kayak.

There’s a Taoist story about a man who fell into a raging river that led to a waterfall. Spectators assumed he was doomed, but he emerged unscathed. When asked how he survived, he replied, “I adapted myself to the water, not the water to me.” That’s the essence of Ziran: trusting the flow, even when it feels wild and unpredictable.

And Not Interfering

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that interfering in someone else’s path doesn’t just disrupt their flow—it also disrupts mine. It’s tempting to correct people, to impose “better” solutions, to rescue them from their own chaos. But Taoism teaches that life, like nature, knows what it’s doing.

A tree doesn’t micromanage its leaves. It lets them fall when they’re ready. The sun doesn’t chase the moon; it waits patiently for its time to shine. And I, too, am learning to let people be.

This doesn’t mean I won’t step in if someone’s in danger or genuinely needs help. But I’ve stopped trying to rewrite other people’s stories. If someone wants to live their life as a chaotic symphony of Bluetooth meltdowns and misplaced scones, who am I to judge? My role is to stay true to my own music—and let others dance (or stumble) to theirs.

Finding My Rhythm Amid the Chaos

These days, I find myself embracing Ziran as a daily practice. When I meditate, I imagine my breath as a wave, flowing in and out without resistance. When I walk, I focus on the natural rhythm of my steps.

When life throws curveballs at me. —like the guy at the coffeehouse who once asked if my Puma sneakers were “an attack on Adidas”—I remind myself: stay in your lane, flow like the river, let it be.

Ziran isn’t about detachment or passivity. It’s about trust: trusting that life knows what it’s doing, trusting that my path will unfold naturally, and trusting that I don’t need to control everything—or everyone—to find peace.

And so, I let the latte-wielding Bluetooth warriors and others who are a part of cuckoo-mania be. They’re not my rocks to move. They’re just part of the river I’m learning to flow through—with humor, grace, and maybe a scone of my own.

Ziran, baby. It’s the natural way.

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